One of the frustrations people have with Ikea is that you can't order online from them (at least in the US). You have to go to the store or hire someone to go to the store for you. Not sure when they started doing this, but you can now buy a bunch of Ikea products from Amazon...some items even have free shipping if you're a Prime user.

Update: Hmm, it seems you can shop online at Ikea...but the shipping and handling costs are insane ($129 to ship a $299 chair). Also of note if you hadn't already guessed...the products on Amazon are often more expensive than they are at Ikea. Mark up!

Update: Further clarification in case it's unclear...Ikea is not selling this stuff on Amazon, it's all third-party resellers. So caveat emptor and all that (and that goes triple for eBay). Ikea wants you in the store, not shopping online.

TO SEE how profoundly the book business is changing, watch the shelves. Next month IKEA will introduce a new, deeper version of its ubiquitous "BILLY" bookcase. The flat-pack furniture giant is already promoting glass doors for its bookshelves. The firm reckons customers will increasingly use them for ornaments, tchotchkes and the odd coffee-table tome-anything, that is, except books that are actually read.

In the first five months of this year sales of consumer e-books in America overtook those from adult hardback books. Just a year earlier hardbacks had been worth more than three times as much as e-books, according to the Association of American Publishers. Amazon now sells more copies of e-books than paper books. The drift to digits will speed up as bookshops close. Borders, once a retail behemoth, is liquidating all of its American stores.

Greg Allen finally finished his version of Enzo Mari's 1974 Autoprogettazione dining table made from wood from Ikea's Ivar shelving system. An example of the Mari's original table went at auction a few years ago for $14,000; Allen paid $120 for his Ikea raw materials.

Bai mapped out a five-hour outing. First, they had hot dogs and soft ice cream cones at noon. Then they enjoyed a long rest lounging on the beds. Bai kicked off her sandals and sprawled out on a Tromso bunk bed. The 36-year-old homemaker made herself comfortable and even answered passing shoppers' questions about the quality of the mattress. "It's soft and a great buy at this price," she told a young woman, pointing to a dangling price tag. After that, Bai and her family took group pictures. By 5 p.m., it was time for another meal, so they headed to the cafeteria and ate braised mushrooms with rice.

Last Saturday, Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg collaborated on a music video for a new holiday gift idea: Dick in the Box. If you haven't seen the video yet, go now and then come back...it's pretty funny and you won't understand the rest of this if you haven't seen it. So go!

You back? So, my favorite part of the song is the instructions and yesterday while we were alternating between watching the video like 50 times and assembling some IKEA furniture for the office, I had the obvious idea. Ikea instructions for making Dick in a Box: